Music for video

I'm about to begin a small project creating a couple of short videos to help promote a outdoor festival I'm involved with. Now we all know that key to a good clip is a good tune. My question is what's a good way to source this? Obviously I intend to respect copyright. I can't imagine every clip I see online has been created with a music budget though. Is it a case of contacting small bands and asking for a favour? Because as an illustrator I know how annoying this can be when you're on the receiving end. Are there sites where you can source loyalty free music or what? Any advice or pointers would be very welcome.

What type of festival is it? if it's a music based festival then just ask the musicians for permission. If not, then I'm sure I'll have something from our vast library of non-MCPS royalty free tunes. Failing that, there's loads of royalty free libraries online now.

Three Fish - you're exactly right. By favour I don't mean ask for a freebie but not knowing the price of such things I'm worried that the little we can offer will still be classed as favour. In which case I'd rather not insult the performer(s). I absolutely think musical contribution to such things is of huge value. We just can't afford huge prices.

Hi schrickvr6, thanks for getting in touch. I'm not sure what direction we want to go with yet (we're a committee so everything is a group choice) but I suspect we'll be wanting to go a little less electronic and a little more traditional. It's not a taste thing, I just think what we want to communicate might be best represented this way. If you were offering to help us out / get involved, I'm really very grateful.

I've recently bought two albums as a result of hearing the artists on Trans Provence and Trans Savoie videos, both where mentioned in credits. I'd you check these edits on Vimeo they also note the music licence site they used.

I just noticed this today too. Having followed a few leads from here and, as you say, following sites/services mentioned on other bike vids I've found more than enough to be getting on with. I think it will come down to budget and finding that special little something.

If you are going to publish your video to YouTube most rights holders will allow you to use their music. The only condition being, the rights holder will claim the audio from your video and directly monetise any views of your video. So when you get a claim notification from YouTube make sure you accept the claim and you'll be free to use the music (in most cases)

One more thing, in the titles to your video credit the artists and put a buy link to iTunes.